On Italian front –
Indian troops seize bridgehead
Americans also inch out small gains
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U.S. warns Chiang to reorganize army as Stilwell is recalled
Chinese leader turned down demand that ‘Uncle Joe’ be given power to unify forces
By Darrell Berrigan, United Press staff writer
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Gould denies fraud charge
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De Gaulle wins victory over patriot group
General disarms French militia
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Delegates discuss snub by Russia
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Bricker: Many workers to back Dewey
Candidate assails Communist foes
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Governor John W. Bricker, Republican vice-presidential candidate, last night asserted that “countless members” of labor organizations will vote Republican because “they know that, for labor’s own best interests, it must choose between Communist domination and industrial freedom in this election.”
Facing the largest and one of the most enthusiastic audiences of his campaign tour, Bricker said that: “Labor can have, and it will get, either Hillman and Browder or respect and independence.”
The speech climaxed Mr. Bricker’s direct appeal to labor for votes for the Republican ticket.
Six-minute oration
The din that greeted him in a six-minute ovation was reminiscent of the cheers he had heard last summer in the Republican National Convention at Chicago when he withdrew his name from the presidential race in favor of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. A brass band and an organ were drowned out by the shouting applause.
The mention of Mr. Dewey’s name as “the next President” set off another ovation that Mr. Bricker had to wave down.
Mr. Bricker drew another outburst when he said he did not mind “taking a licking from the Democrats” but that he would “hate to be defeated by the Communist Party masquerading as the Democratic Party.”
Hillman’s name booed
A tremendous boo rose at Mr. Bricker’s first mention of Sidney Hillman who, he said, “helped toss the New Deal convention.” Another boo mingled with hisses when Mr. Bricker called Earl Browder “the No. 1 Communist in this country” and “a draft dodger in the First World War.”
He said:
The man behind Franklin Roosevelt is Sidney Hillman. The man behind Sidney Hillman is Earl Browder. And back of him are the class hatreds, the alien philosophies and the economic slavery of the Old World.
This nation intends to remain American. Nov. 7 is the day to let the world know it.
Canada censors Bricker’s speech
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
The campaign speech which Governor John W. Bricker, Republican vice-presidential nominee, delivered here last night was censored by a Canadian radio company representative before it was put on the Mutual Broadcasting System Network in the United States.
Frank Burke, a representative of CKLW, Windsor (Ontario) broadcasting station, read Mr. Bricker’s prepared speech to make sure, he said, that it contained nothing derogatory to Great Britain or Canada. Mr. Burke telephoned his office across the Detroit River that it contained nothing that would be “offensive.”
Mr. Burke said:
This station is owned by Canadian capital – the Rogers-Majestic Radio Company – and for that reason whatever goes out over it must conform to the rules.
Party bigwigs are worried as campaign hits stretch
Hottest campaign since 1928 stumps experts, who can’t figure out soldier votes
New York (UP) –
The nation’s hottest political campaign since 1928 swept into the home stretch today with pollcasters keeping tongue in cheek and crossing fingers on both hands because this 1944 campaign – the first in wartime since Abraham Lincoln – has become a nightmare for those who take straw ballots.
Even the high politicos of both parties are worried. The main thing that stumps them is the soldier vote. About 4,300,000 servicemen and women are expected to return ballots and the law prevents taking a poll of them.
In some pivotal states, such as Pennsylvania, the soldier vote may well decide the victor. Democratic leaders privately admit they are counting heavily on the soldier vote.
Vote extensions passed
The New York State Legislature, acting on suggestions by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, yesterday passed at a special session legislation extending from Nov. 3 to Nov. 6 the deadline for the return of soldier ballots, and extended the polling time in the state by two hours. The predominantly-Republican body defeated a Democratic move to extend the soldier-vote deadline until Nov. 30.
National Democratic Chairman Robert E. Hannegan told a press conference yesterday that he had “no doubt” the Democratic ticket would carry Massachusetts, and added that “reports are more favorable every day” that President Roosevelt will carry New York.
Mr. Roosevelt swings his campaign activities to Massachusetts Saturday, when he speaks at Boston. En route, Mr. Hannegan said, he probably will make brief rear-platform appearances at Hartford and Bridgeport, Connecticut.
The votes in 1940
Some Democratic claims assert that Governor Dewey won’t carry all the ten states which the late Wendell Willkie won in 1940. Those states and the vote were:
| Willkie | Roosevelt | |
|---|---|---|
| South Dakota | 177,065 | 131,362 |
| North Dakota | 154,590 | 124,036 |
| Nebraska | 352,201 | 263,677 |
| Michigan | 1,039,917 | 1,032,991 |
| Kansas | 489,169 | 364,725 |
| Idaho | 632,370 | 578,800 |
| Indiana | 899,466 | 874,063 |
| Colorado | 279,576 | 265,554 |
| Maine | 163,951 | 156,478 |
| Vermont | 78,371 | 64,269 |
Those 10 states gave Mr. Willkie 82 Electoral College votes in 1940. This year they are worth only 78, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska having lost one vote each as a result of reapportionment.
City vote in 1940
Mr. Willkie’s biggest weakness in 1940 was in the big cities. He lost several important states, including New York, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania, because the city vote turned against him. Dewey men believe he can cut down that metropolitan advantage.
Important cities which Mr. Willkie lost and the vote included:
NEW YORK CITY: Roosevelt, 1,966,083; Willkie, 1,247,624. State vote, city included: Roosevelt, 3,251,918; Willkie, 3,027,478.
PHILADELPHIA: Roosevelt, 532,149; Willkie, 354,878. State vote, city included: Roosevelt, 2,171,035; Willkie, 1,899,848.
CLEVELAND: Roosevelt, 347,118; Willkie, 209,070. State vote, city included: Roosevelt, 1,733,139; Willkie, 1,586,773.
CHICAGO: Roosevelt, 1,029,538; Willkie, 731,716. State vote, city included: Roosevelt, 2,142,934; Willkie, 2,047,240.
DETROIT: Roosevelt, 447,000; Willkie, 280,000. State vote, city included: Willkie, 1,039,917; Roosevelt, 1,032,991.
The Republicans barely managed to squeeze Michigan into their bag, but they lost the other states mainly because of those large city leads.
And there you have the pattern for the 1944 campaign. Both candidates are making torrid bids for votes in Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia.
Truman, Wallace to share speaking platform tonight
New York (UP) –
Senator Harry S. Truman and Vice President Henry A. Wallace will speak from the same platform here tonight for the first time since Mr. Truman displaced Mr. Wallace in the No. 2 position in the Democratic Party.
Both moved into New York to appear at a rally in Madison Square Garden after campaign tours calling for the reelection of President Roosevelt.
WCAE will broadcast the rally at 10:30 p.m. EWT.
Tonight’s rally apparently was intended to be a demonstration of party unity which would allay any discontent which may have persisted among Wallace supporters.
Mr. Truman reached New York after an 8,000-mile tour in which he spoke in 13 states around the rim of the country since he left New Orleans on his campaign swing three weeks ago. He will speak at Parkersburg, West Virginia, tomorrow night and at Pittsburgh Thursday.
Mr. Truman completed the New England lap of his tour last night at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where he again acclaimed President Roosevelt’s war leadership and said it was “always poor policy to send in substitutes when you have a winning team on the field.”
Mr. Truman also said the record of Senator David I. Walsh (D-MA), who has just announced his support of the Democratic ticket, was isolationist but that the Democrats had “a chance to reform” Mr. Walsh.
FCC denies plea to censor talks
Washington (UP) –
The Federal Communications Commission today denied a petition of Milwaukee attorney William B. Rubin that radio stations be required to obtain scripts of political broadcasts at least 48 hours in advance of delivery so that objectionable comments might be deleted.
Mr. Rubin’s petition had also demanded that the FCC require the four major networks and certain affiliated stations to retract alleged “unjustified charges” made against President Roosevelt by Republican candidates.
The FCC denied the entire petition without elaboration, but officials had previously pointed out that the FCC is not a censorship agency and that the Federal Communications Act specifically prohibits censorship of political broadcasts by either the FCC or radio stations.
Perkins: West Virginia miners stick to Roosevelt
Dewey’s only hope is in Southern section
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Grant Town, West Virginia –
A factor in the fight over whether coal miners are going to vote for Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Dewey and possibly swing the electoral votes of the doubtful states of West Virginia and Pennsylvania is Joe Zieminski.
Joe lives in Grant Town, a good-looking community built around a big coal mine of the Koppers Coal Company.
President of local
He was in the midst of his family of a wife and six children and their clean faces contrasted with the soiled head of the family, who hadn’t had a chance to wash up.
Joe Zieminski, a big fellow, is president of Local 4047 of the United Mine Workers and has also been the chairman of the forces working within the miners’ union to bring about home rule for the union organization in which most of the district officers are named by President John L. Lewis.
Joe said 90 percent of the miners in his local are going to vote for President Roosevelt, just as they have three times previously.
Home rulers for Roosevelt
He paid tribute to Mr. Lewis as a union leader and a bargainer with the coal companies, but when it comes to politics – well, Mr. Lewis could vote for Mr. Dewey if he wanted to, but not Joe Zieminski or his friends. They were going down the line for FDR.
All the local unions involved in the home-rule fight have declared for Mr. Roosevelt, so it would seem the home-rule movement is hooked directly with the Roosevelt support, and against Mr. Lewis in his presidential preference. But Roosevelt supporters in the Fairmont district don’t want to put it on that basis. They say Mr. Lewis may be right in his policy of appointing officers for districts unable to select the right kind of officers for themselves.
Dewey hopes in South
Into this comes a strong hint that Communist influence is trying to get a foothold in the United Mine Workers, which Mr. Lewis, according to all published statements, would be against.
Roosevelt sentiment here in Northern West Virginia seems stronger among the miners than it did in the southern section of this state. If Mr. Dewey is to carry West Virginia, it is the southern end which must furnish the margin.
Republicans get some cheer from reports that McDowell County, far to the south and the largest coal-producing county in the country, is swinging their way.
Michigan may extend poll time
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Governor Harry Kelly today called a special session of the State Legislature to consider extension of the Nov. 7 voting hours.
Governor Kelly said here that the Legislature has been asked to meet, in Lansing Friday to consider a bill which would permit individual cities and townships to extend the 8:00 p.m. CWT voting deadline.
Reconsideration of the question came on an appeal from the Detroit and Wayne County Election Commissions, which earlier had declared that “additional facilities” would be ample to take care of the anticipated record vote.
Guffey predicts landslide triumph
Washington (UP) –
Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA) today denounced “stargazing, done with mirrors,” by which “some political prognosticators” have arrived at the conclusion that the presidential election will be close.
Mr. Guffey predicted a Roosevelt landslide of 390 electoral votes.
Asserting his confidence in betting commissioners as against “prognosticators” making “mythical decisions,” Senator Guffey declared:
The boys who are willing to put cash on the barrelhead give Roosevelt the advantage in enough states to give him 390 electoral votes.
Editorial: Why wasn’t it done?
The one point on which President Roosevelt got definite in his Chicago promise to encourage job-creating private enterprise concerned the depreciation rate on new industrial plants and machinery for tax purposes.
He brought that in “just as an aside,” but a “pretty important” one. Businessmen who expand their plants and replace obsolete and worn-out equipment with new equipment, he said, should be allowed to depreciate these new facilities more rapidly. That would mean “more jobs, jobs for the worker, increased profits for the businessman and a lower cost to the consumer.”
It would, indeed, mean these things. It is far from being the only encouragement that government should give to post-war expansion of industry and business, but it is a vastly important one. Especially, as Henry J. Kaiser and many other industrialists have pointed out recently, to small companies and to companies which will have to borrow money to finance expansion projects. The accelerated depreciation rates now promised by Mr. Roosevelt would have meant more jobs, increased business profits and lower consumer costs in the years before the war.
But Mr. Roosevelt’s Treasury Department, under the law, fixes depreciation rates. And the Treasury, intent on squeezing every possible cent of immediate tax revenue out of industry rather than on encouraging industry to produce more, employ more, profit more, and become a more fruitful source of future tax revenue, has insisted on keeping depreciation slow.
Mr. Roosevelt has had nearly 12 years in which he might have made this beneficial change in government policy. The fact that he didn’t make it creates doubt whether his present mild enthusiasm for it would survive after a fourth-term election.
Editorial: What about it, Gypsy?
We have heard the political orations of Frank Sinatra, Orson Welles, Paulette Goddard, Edward G. Robinson and some of the other radio spellbinders – but cannot make up our minds on the vital issues of this campaign until Gypsy Rose Lee declares herself. How about it, Gypsy; won’t you bare your political views?
Editorial: Dewey and jobs
Governor Dewey’s interest in post-war jobs has been demonstrated in practice during his two years as Governor of New York. It is no recent campaign development.
His state administration has worked diligently to insure high production and employment after the war. It set an objective of jobs for six million New Yorkers – or a million more than had jobs in 1940 – challenged private employers to plan to reach that objective speedily, and offered them the state government’s enthusiastic help.
The help has been given in many forms, from technical advice on resources, markets and plant locations to tax policies designed to stimulate expansion, especially of small and new enterprises. However, Governor Dewey has insisted that “business must lead” in the planning; that “governmental action can never take the place of the private endeavors of the people – employers and employees alike.”
Yet in government’s sphere we think his record is outstanding, For example, last winter, the Baruch Report commended the “excellent advance planning” for post-war public works for New York State and City as an example for other states and cities.
If the national administration had shown as much determination to be ready for peace there would be fewer present fears of severe, extended unemployment during a delayed transition from war.
A year ago, Governor Dewey described to the New York CIO convention the jobs philosophy he is now propounding as a presidential candidate.
He said:
Never again must we permit able-bodied men and women, willing to work, to suffer the corrosion of long-continued unemployment. Never again must we submit to policies of artificial scarcity, Along that road lies economic suicide, Our goal is in the opposite direction, It is maximum employment and maximum production which lead to maximum consumption and an ever-higher standard of living.
A free society, he continued, can reach that goal only if private enterprise, operating under a profit system, provides the basis of production and employment. Government must help to create “conditions which will stimulate private enterprise to produce for peacetime consumption.” But if, in peace as in war, government continues to be the prime mover of economic life, “then, inevitably, government will take all” and labor, along with business, will lose freedom and get government compulsion.
It took courage to say that to the branch of labor which tends so strongly toward reliance on a government-planned, government-dominated economy. Yet we think most Americans share the philosophy that Mr. Dewey stated then, and states now.
As President, we believe, he would practice this philosophy vigorously because he certainly would want his administration to be successful, and because it obviously could not be successful if he repeated the mistakes of Warren Harding, of Calvin Coolidge, of Herbert Hoover – or of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This country cannot eat, wear, use or enjoy more than it produces. Abundant production is the only source of higher living standards, the only hope that we can carry our debt burden and escape the agonies of inflation. But, since abundant production itself becomes a curse unless it can be eaten, worn, used or enjoyed, the people must have abundant employment, abundant earning power and abundant buying power.
Mr. Dewey understands these facts. We believe his policies and practices, unlike so many of Mr. Roosevelt, would accord with these facts; would operate resolutely against the doctrine of artificial scarcity whether it appeared in business, labor, agriculture or government, and resolutely for the doctrine of abundance.
Millett: Keep tab on young folk
Parents must not be gullible
By Ruth Millett
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‘Let us be gay’ in resort attire
Bodice and skirt are separate
By Maxine Garrison
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Stokes: Midwest lift
By Thomas L. Stokes
Chicago, Illinois –
Those out this way working for the reelection of President Roosevelt are feeling better about it.
By “out this way” is meant this big state and two big states to the East covered on this political tour, Ohio and Michigan. They have a total of 72 electoral votes: Illinois 28, Ohio 25, and Michigan 19. It’s a fair bet now, at odds, that President Roosevelt might carry one of the three. An upsurge the Democrats profess to see might topple all three to him.
The winner’s margin in each apparently is going to be narrow. That’s what makes it exciting now, just a week before election.
A few weeks ago, all three were virtually conceded to Governor Dewey, and he still must be given the edge.
West of here in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, there is no question. Republicans are too well entrenched. But this state, Michigan and Ohio have large urban populations to offset the Republican farm and smalltown strongholds.
Whatever is responsible, a noticeable lift is encountered among those active on behalf of the President, and this includes labor groups, notably the CIO and its Political Action Committee, as well as Democratic Party workers. The latter are now somewhat overshadowed, conscious of the weakness in the regular Democratic organizations which, as in Michigan, have been almost superseded by the Political Action Committee.
Three factors boost spirit
This lift may be largely psychological, although it seems to have some basis in fact. Polls here and there seem to indicate a turning toward the President in the last few days, perhaps representing hitherto undecided voters.
It is attributed to these factors:
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The unexpectedly high registration in cities, breaking all previous records, such as in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and the lesser auto centers in Michigan. Democrats interpret this to their advantage and are highly elated over it. Registration in Wayne County (Detroit) may go as high as 100,000 above four years ago. Chicago’s registration is more than 100,000 above 1940, while downstate Republican Illinois is about 100,000 off the figure of four years ago.
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President Roosevelt’s 11th-hour entry into the campaign as a dynamic, fighting figure.
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A feeling that Governor Dewey’s campaign is petering out, that he has shot nearly all his ammunition, just as the President is hitting his stride and gradually bringing his campaign to a peak for “the Roosevelt strong finish.”
Largest political demonstration
Remembering the experience of four years ago, Democrats expect to gain much from the President’s personal tour which took him through the industrial Midwest to this city, Democrats here were excited about the meeting at Soldier Field last Saturday that set a new record for political crowds and demonstrations, thanks to Mayor Ed Kelly and his efficient machine.
The effects of this personal appearance, they hope, will react all through the Midwest, east of the Mississippi.
It was believed here the President was shrewd to choose as his subject Saturday night a continuation of the New Deal as the voters out here know it and have benefited from it. The straight New Deal doctrine is regarded as peculiarly effective here, even among the farmers, some of whom downstate, it is reported, still remember what it did for them. They are skeptical about giving up a known for an unknown quantity, despite Governor Dewey’s promises.
Jap treatment of American prisoners writes back chapter in war history
Efforts to send help repulsed; enemy even hides sites of camps
By Peter Edson
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Half-million bypassed Japs pose big problem for Allies
Isolated troops, camp followers may stay as colonists; who will root them out?
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
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Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
Hollywood, California –
Have you seen the bulletin just issued to employers by the Office of Defense Transportation? It warns them that men and women are different. Now there’s a piece of news. Thank goodness they’ve made it official. I’d hate to go through life thinking of George as a sister.
The bulletin concludes by advising women to “wear long underwear when working outdoors in winter, and behave in a businesslike manner.” Well now, make up your mind. Personally, I’m still going to wear an overcoat and galoshes.